


Escapes - Roads

by EmmaBryonyFox



Series: Coffee and Books - The Mighty Tales [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-16 02:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14802974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaBryonyFox/pseuds/EmmaBryonyFox
Summary: How Jester leaves Nicodranas, meets Fjord in Port Damali, arrives in Zadash and somehow opens a Coffee Shop.





	Escapes - Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Hi and welcome to my little story. It's the beginning of a whole Alternate Universe I created and I really hope you enjoy it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jester takes the first bus out of Nicodranas.

The night was quiet and cool, a fresh breeze made the leaves on the trees dance and the moon peeked from behind some clouds, watching what occurred in the city of Nicodranas. However, there wasn't much to see, not at this hour, way past midnight and only some time before sunrise. Most people were still sleeping, escaping the harsh reality and hopefully dreaming of something beautiful, peaceful and reassuring. The moon hid behind the clouds again, and one of the few people that were awake sighted and closed the little sketchbook they were holding.

Jester was sitting on a bench, all alone, waiting for a bus that would take her out of the city she had never left before. With the moon gone, she now felt even lonelier, having not even a little light to be able to doodle in her sketchbook. So she packed it back into her little backpack, along with her favourite pen, and wrapped her thin jacket a little tighter around her figure. She did not know that the nights could get so cold. She did not know that the colourful streets of Nicodranas were empty and scary in the dark. She did not know so many things she should have known.

She didn’t regret what she had done. She was sad, of course, because she was forced to leave her mother and her home, without the certification that she would ever be allowed to return, but Jester didn’t regret anything. She could explore the world, see new places, travel. She had always wanted to do that, even before she had met the Traveller who often told her about mysterious and foreign locations all over the continent of Wildemount and beyond. It would be an adventure.

Jester could see her breath, little clouds that escaped her mouth and then disappeared in the wind. After watching it for some minutes, she became bored and pulled her brand new mobile phone out of one of the many pockets of her dress and stared at the screen. She didn’t see much, only the picture of her favourite book cover she saved as her background almost immediately after she got the phone, and the time, telling her that it was now exactly 4:52 and that she still had to wait an hour until the first bus out of Nicodranas would arrive and take her to Port Damali. Jester didn’t have anything interesting on her phone that could help her kill the time, so she just sat there, staring at the lock screen and thinking.

This wasn’t the first time Jester had left her house, of course not, but she hadn’t been outside that often either, especially not at night. So this was new. Very new. Maybe it was something good, she didn’t know, but what she did know was, that she would probably never explore the streets of Nicodranas ever again. The few things she had seen during her time here would have to suffice. However, what she feared the most was, that she had lost her mother, that the incident she caused had worse consequences than she first thought. Actually, she hadn’t thought about consequences at all when she had tricked Lord Robert Something-Something, whatever his boring name was. She just wanted to have some fun. Now she had to leave.

The sky turned clearer, the stars slowly lost their bright light and while Jester was sitting on the bench at the bus station, the sun rose and suddenly, the dark atmosphere vanished and the first birds started singing their songs. As if the sun had driven the silence away, the city of Nicodranas began to wake up and come to life. Although it was only 5:30, Jester wasn’t the only one awake anymore. Somehow that made her feel less alone.

And all of a sudden, there were two people at the bus station. Or, to be correct, one person and one cloaked figure, not quite fitting into the scene with its medieval clothes. Jester didn’t care. It was one of the things she loved about the Traveller. He was different, individual and not like everyone else. She really loved him. He sat down next to Jester, his green cloak bright in the early darkness.

„Good Morning, Jester“, was the only thing he said, but it made Jester feel better than before. It was a good feeling.

„Traveller! Tell me, where should I go? Where is the best place to be?“ Her voice was an excited disturbance in the silence of the early morning, but there was no one that could complain, so it didn’t matter. The Traveller just laughed, a warm chuckle flew around in the air, making everything a little bit lighter.

„The first bus will take you where you belong.“

After those words, he disappeared again, leaving Jester with new confidence and, finally, a plan. She may not know where she was going, but she knew what path she would take.

 

_____________

 

The drive to Port Damali was longer than Jester would have thought. There also weren’t many people in the bus, and the few that were had fallen asleep pretty quickly, so Jester was alone with her sketchbook and her thoughts and her favourite book that she had read hundreds of times before. However, most of the time she found herself looking out of the window. The slight sadness of leaving Nicodranas soon had changed into fascination for the world outside of the city. Of course she had already seen the world through movies, pictures and books, but that just wasn’t the same. It wasn’t as real. The grass was greener, the trees were higher, the flowers were more beautiful.

For most of the journey, Jester was astonished. She couldn’t describe it any better, that was what she was feeling. Amazement. She wished, she could share that feeling with her mother. So she tried. Only some hours after the bus left Nicodranas, Jester was already working on a letter for her mother. She didn’t write much, she drew mostly. She drew the landscapes, the flowers, the sky and the other bus passengers. The halfling woman scrolling through a thin book, the old half-elf, whose head was leaned on the window and who seemed to sleep peacefully, and the young human father, that was totally content watching his little daughter doze beside him.

Suddenly, Jester stopped drawing. She looked up, observed the little girl and her dad. She felt funny, didn’t know how to explain it, and it took a while before she realised that she was jealous. She didn’t like it, but she also couldn’t stop feeling it. So she tried to ignore it, signed her letter and folded it, deciding to search for a post office first thing when she arrived in Port Damali.

The jealousy stuck with her, a little ball in the back of her head, and Jester couldn’t avoid peeking curiously to the girl and her father. Only some minutes later, she understood, why she was jealous. Not because she couldn’t return to her mother, but because she didn’t have a father. Not that she knew. Every question about him was ignored by her mother, so she just stopped asking. At some point, Jester had just forgotten that she was supposed to even have a father. It was weird, now thinking about something she hadn’t thought of in years. Now she couldn’t turn off the questions starting to rise in her head. Who was he? Why did he leave her? Did he even know about her? Did he care? Jester started hoping. The Traveller had said, that the bus would take her where she belonged. Maybe she belonged with her father.

With a smile on her face, Jester closed her eyes and imagined finally meeting the last piece of the puzzle of who she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapters will be longer.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it. And English is not my first language, so if you've found anything that was wrong with my grammar, style, word choice, ... don't hesitate to tell me. I'll appreciate it. And I'm always open for constructive criticism if there's something else you want to say.


End file.
